003 — handwritten [graph paper]

[argents]

[ July 1st.

This time, Banagher's number is copied down on graph paper. What appears isn't anything handwritten, but a rough technical sketch. An empty jumpseat of some kind, crowned by three screens and what looks like an impossibly advanced panoramic HUD. The rest is left sparsely detailed — no buttons, concrete controls, or clues as to what this cockpit (what else could it be?) belongs to. Save for the odd one-on-one occasion, he's been tight-lipped about what exactly has splashed itself uninvited across his memories, never knowing for sure what to trust when it came to himself. Never quite believing he could have been this... thing's pilot.

Off to the side, around some messy notes, is a scrawled out line of text in another language: À mon seul désir. There's a poetic ring to it, nearly romantic.

It's odd, placed next to a piece of technology so futuristic. ]

It's weird. I had to wrack my brain to remember this thing enough to put it on paper, even if I can't forget it. [ A pause, possibly to tap his pencil. ] If you asked any kid when they were younger what they wanted for their birthday, a giant robot probably ranked pretty high, right? Not so much when you're 18, though. When things like this aren't even supposed to be real...

[ Let alone crazy brain powers. At least he was getting used to those. And more importantly: ]

...it could have come with a better name.

[ Which he is hoping like hell wasn't his doing. ]

Comments

[acequeen]

They really do.

[Eerie resemblances, but his sketches are so much better than hers. Poo.]

Different models for sure. For example, yours doesn't have those wheels attached to the ankles like mine does. Still, I can't help but wonder as to why we know these things.

[argents]

[ Hey Storm Crusher there is a grade A piece of robot and don't you let anyone tell you otherwise. ]

This blue one

[ His pencil taps once, twice. ]

It's a weapon. I can't think of any reason why I'd need to know that. Or want to. But in my memories, it was definitely a weapon.

[acequeen]

[Okay point. Storm Crusher >>>>>>> all the robots, Y/Y? Nonetheless, her interest is piqued.]

A weapon? Then what does it exactly do? Shoot lasers from the palm of its hands? Crush tanks by stepping on them?

[More taps.]

For the ones I've seen in my head, they had guns attached to their hands, as though they are accessories to them.

[So long as she doesn't think about what they did to the people in her visions. Too bloody for her taste.]

[argents]

Right here [ Previously absent, the rifle-looking appendage on the jet plane gets sketched in. ] It was like a laser, or something. It

[ It still makes him a little sick to even recall, but he remembered it for a reason, right? ]

It killed a lot of people like it was nothing. They were there one minute and then

[ The last line edges off somewhat erratically. Gone the next. ]

I was really scared in the mines. But because I remembered that, how senseless it all was, I reacted. I never wanted to see something like that happen again.

[acequeen]

[So Banagher saw it as well, the deaths of people by a damn robot of all creations. Just the fact makes Regina feel like she has a tight knot in her stomach.]

I'm sorry.

[What else can she say other than she'd saw the deaths, too? He seems to be in a state of distress as is, and there's no way she'll contribute to more of it.]

[argents]

I guess this is why I can't just think of it as happening to somebody else.

[ He sighs shortly, even if just to himself. He can only pray that this wasn't what the Unicorn was for. ]

Do you remember anything about the ones you saw? Besides how they look.

[acequeen]

Other than they shoot things? Not much else that I can tell.

[They shoot people, too, but she's not about to spill the beans anytime soon. She pinches the bridge of her nose, though it's not visible.]

They look like war machines, but it's just a guess.

[argents]

Imagining a war on that scale is impossible.

[ Or at least insofar as he knows it. ]

But so is a lot of this.